1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to communication systems, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for detecting DTX frames in communication systems.
2. Related Art
Cellular telecommunication systems are typically characterized by a plurality of transceivers in mobile phones and base stations. Each transceiver includes a transmitter and a receiver which communicate with each other via one or more links. A link typically comprises a plurality of communication channels such as signaling channels and traffic channels. Traffic channels are communication channels through which users convey (i.e., transmit and/or receive) user information. Signaling channels are used by the system equipment to convey signaling information used to manage, operate and otherwise control the system. The system equipment, which are typically owned, maintained and operated by a service provider, include various known radio and processing equipment used in communication systems. The system equipment along with user equipment (e.g., cell phone) generate and receive the signaling information.
Communication signals transmitted and received via communication links are often distorted by various anomalies that exist in the communication channels. These channel anomalies cause the signals to be received erroneously. For example, channel anomalies such as Rayleigh fading, frequency translation and phase jitter often cause the signals to lose power, so that a signal is received at a significantly lower power level than it was transmitted. As a result, signals adversely affected by channel anomalies are often received with errors. One way of preventing errors from occurring, or at least to reduce the likelihood of errors occurring, is by applying power control techniques to these communication systems.
Typically, a power control algorithm is performed at a base station. In looking at a signal received from a mobile, if the signal looks weak (e.g., based on detected frame error rate (FER)), the base station sends a command to either increase or decrease mobile station transmit power. For example, a comfortable level of quality in a voice system is possible with a FER of approximately 1%. If FER is much less than (<<) 1%, the mobile station is wasting power, and the power control algorithm located at the base station sends commands to the mobile requesting the mobile to reduce the transmit power. For FER much greater than(>>)1%, the level of quality is degraded and the base station sends a command to the mobile to bring the mobile transmit power up in order to restore quality.
Typically, in order to effect power control at the base station, two loops are utilized, termed “closed-loop power control”: inner loop power control and outer loop power control. In an exemplary CDMA communication system for example, an inner loop power control algorithm (“inner loop”), which may operate at a speed of 800 Hz for example, is used to adjust the power at the transmitter. Thus, a base station measures a received signal to noise ratio (known as Eb/Nt) and compares the Eb/Nt value to a threshold. The threshold is used by the inner loop to determine a specified quality of service for power control. If the received Eb/Nt is too high (e.g., above the threshold), the base station transmitter sends a down power command to the mobile station, and vice versa where Eb/Nt is too low.
However, a communication path between base station and mobile station is not often line of sight (LOS), and is constantly changing due to the motion of the mobile station, or due to the mobile station's surroundings. As a consequence, path loss between the base station and the mobile station is constantly changing. Under these conditions, the threshold must be adjusted in order to maintain the quality of service of the radio link. The system that performs the function of adjusting the threshold (e.g., setting and adjusting the set point of the threshold) is called the outer loop power control (“outer loop”). Together with the inner loop, the outer loop forms the closed loop power control.
As noted above, the threshold is used to ensure quality of service of the radio link and typically depends on the speed of the mobile and the RF environment in the surroundings of the mobile. The speed in which the outer loop updates (adjusts) the threshold is lower than the inner loop speed. Typical the outer loop operates at a speed of 50 Hz, which is lower than the speed of the inner loop. Thus if the mobile is moving at a low speed, in relation to the base station, the outer loop is effective in adjusting the threshold. However, at high speeds (e.g., in a fading condition environment such as an environment subject to Rayleigh fading) the outer loop is not effective in tracking the changes of the RF conditions. Typically the outer loop is tuned to operate at low FER for efficiency. Thus, a small fraction of all data frames (frames) received by the base station constitute frames that are received with errors. These frames received with errors are called “erasures”. The instance of receiving an erasure triggers the outer loop to increase the threshold (e.g., raise the set point of the threshold). When a frame is received without error (e.g., normally received), the outer loop lowers the threshold slightly in order to decrease its transmitted power and interference to other mobiles.
However, due to a mechanism that is fundamentally different from closed loop power control, the base station can receive frames in error, if the mobile decides not to transmit frames at a given time. For example, if the mobile does not have data to send to the base station, but the mobile wants to maintain the connection (e.g., maintain the data channel up) to the base station, the mobile is allowed to maintain the data channel up and set the power of a given transmitted frame to zero. This can happen at any time during the data transmission. This condition, where the mobile station actually transmits a frame, but the frame contains no data and has its power (e.g., gain) set to be zero, is called a Discontinued Transmission (DTX) mode. DTX mode can be initiated by the mobile at any time, without informing the base station (e.g., the base station has no knowledge that the mobile station has shifted to DTX mode). Accordingly, frames that do not carry data and which are transmitted with zero power are called “DTX frames”. The mobile station transmits DTX frames to the base station to avoid bringing down the connection (data channel) when the data traffic is bursty. For example, data in cellular communications is typically transmitted in bursts (e.g., many consecutive frames of data transmitted, followed by silence, followed by another “burst” of data, etc.).
To the base station, both DTX frames and erasures exhibit similar signal strength around the noise level. Thus, it is difficult for a base station receiver to distinguish between DTX frames and erasures. The base station must perform some type of efficient blind detection in order to efficiently distinguish DTX frames from erasures.
Received frames that are incorrectly identified as DTX frames by a receiver prevent the outer loop from increasing the threshold, which potentially may cause additional erasures. Further, received frames that are incorrectly identified as erasures cause the outer loop to unnecessarily increase the set point of the threshold increasing interference and ultimately decreasing the call capacity of the system.
The ideal response of the closed-loop power control algorithm when processing DTX frames is fundamentally different from a response to processing erasures. For example, if a DTX frame is received, the power control outer loop should freeze the threshold (e.g., maintain the threshold at a given set point) for the duration of the DTX. However, if a frame undergoes a channel fade and an erasure is actually received, the outer loop should increase the threshold in order to maintain quality of service of the link. Since the response of the outer loop depends on the detected state of the received frames, DTX detection by the receiver must be reliable.
DTX frames are detected at the receiver end. In the forward link, DTX detection is done at the mobile station, while in the reverse link, DTX detection is performed at the base station. Typically, DTX detection is accomplished using a technique that compares a metric, such as a measured traffic energy value of the channel or symbol error rate (SER) value of the transmitting channel, against the threshold. If the metric is lower than the threshold, then the frame is declared DTX; otherwise the frame is an erasure. However, the reliability of this technique is susceptible to noise fluctuations that cause detection errors. Further, this susceptibility increases as the transmitted signal becomes weakened.
Accordingly, power control algorithms using existing DTX detectors (e.g., a DTX detector using a single channel energy metric or a single SER metric) must tune operation based on a compromise between two opposing requirements: (1) a requirement to minimize the probability that a DTX frame is detected as an erasure (“P(E|D”), in order to increase the link capacity; and (2) a requirement to minimize the probability that frames transmitted and received in error (e.g., erasures) are detected as DTX frames, in order to avoid a burst of errors in the link. This second probability is referred to as P(D|E).
Typically, this compromise is arranged so as to maximize link capacity, i.e., the DTX detector is operated such that P(E|D) is small (less than 10% of the target frame error rate (FER) of the link). When a DTX detector is tuned in this way, P(D|E) increases to unacceptable levels. This is particularly undesirable for traffic channels where the coding is efficient (e.g. turbo-coding), and to traffic channels where the average traffic energy of transmitted frames such as erasures are close to the traffic energy of frames that are not transmitted (e.g., DTX frames). In order to overcome this deficiency, to avoid a burst of frame errors, and to avoid degradation of the quality of service of the traffic channel, the conventional power control algorithm used by existing DTX detectors must increase the transmitted power when DTX frames are detected. The power increase thus unnecessarily decreases link capacity. Thus, the existing DTX detector is not effective in maintaining the probability of false DTX frame detection low.